


Never can be easy

by Lilliburlero



Category: Whiskey in the Jar (Song), Whiskey in the Jar - The Dubliners (Song)
Genre: 18th Century, 19th Century, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, Ireland, Jukebox Treat, Period Typical Attitudes, Sex Work References, Stealth Crossover, Story within a Story, Trafficking References, Trans Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24443323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: It's a dull day in the Kildare Street Club, but one of the gentlemen has a story to tell.*Content notes: tropes drawn from 18th/19th century records of transmasculine people, such asCharles Hamilton, ideas of trans people as deceitful, mentions of sex trafficking in an 18th century setting.
Relationships: Narrator & Captain Farrell, Narrator's Brother & Captain Farrell, Narrator/Jenny
Comments: 18
Kudos: 21
Collections: Jukebox 2020





	Never can be easy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StopTalkingAtMe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/gifts).



Imagine: a filthy afternoon in mid-November, and the attentive servants of the Kildare Street Club have responded to the greasy streets and clinging damps outside by banking the fires high, though because the air is still mild for the season, this has merely the effect of making a reliably stuffy atmosphere positively asphyxiating. The old men seem to like it.

Look at that vast Admiral bellying forth beneath the portrait of Castlereagh, and how meagre his particular friend the physician! Though generally accounted a polymath, the latter is not as mathematically-minded as his nautical companion, who is endeavouring to explain to him a formula by which he may prove that no man on Earth is separated by more than three acquaintances from any other.

‘Sure it is the logarithm of all the world, joy, but to ask me be astonished at it, as either an Irishman or a servant of the state—’ his pale grey eyes turn upwards to the late Marquess with a look that would make any man hesitate to excite his hostility, mild and frail as he seems, ‘that would be as if a Fellow of the college down the road proposed explain the proportions of a sloop or a brig to you, and why she floats—’

The Admiral pouts, and opens his mouth to protest, but just then another joins them. They greet him with an enthusiasm that, one senses, is less for the pleasures of his conversation than his utility in heading off a peevish quarrel, such as often arises between intimates confined in such airless surroundings.

‘I beg your pardon, gentlemen. I could not help overhear you were speaking of the coincidences of acquaintance, and I believe I have a curious story for you upon the point, if you have the time to hear it.’

Their interlocutor is a half-colonel of foot, reputed the natural son of a man once spectacularly blackballed from this very institution, and correspondingly anxious to show genial and unexceptionable in all things, keeps a stock of discreet and romantic tales, a little loose-tongued perhaps, but without positive indecency, piquant without scurrility. It is even possible that some of them are true.

And unless we have something a great deal better to be doing, let us listen to him, alongside our friends the Admiral and the Doctor.

> ‘So. When I was a new-promoted captain in the Peninsula, our beloved old colour sergeant—old! I suppose the poor fellow was about my years now—survived a very dicey little skirmish only to wake the next morning paralysed all along his left side, a stroke. We got him behind the lines to hospital, where he rallied somewhat, to be able to sit up and take some broth, talk a little, but it was clear enough that he could not hope to recover. I sat with him whenever I could, for it comforted him to hear such a touch of the brogue as I have, while he muttered out of one side of his mouth—well, a kind of confession. Ah, such a sweet light lilting voice as he had, rather at variance with his burly appearance, reduced to a croaking mumble! I shall never forget the pathos of it.
> 
> ‘He was from Kerry, name of Thaddeus O’Quill, and he grew up on the estate of the Farrells of Garryantanvally. The Farrells were a mischancy lot, to be sure: misers begat rakes and fools begat knaves as far back as their genealogy should go, and by the time of which I speak they were heavily indebted to none other than the O’Connells of Derrynane. Thady was the steward’s eldest boy, and of an age almost to the day with the only son of the big house. I suppose it might be said they were like brothers, but I think you, gentlemen, will know what I mean when I say not so very like also, because when two such share no blood and are born into different ranks of society, the fraternity has a very particular character: it runs thicker and deeper, and sours not into indifference, but bitter enmity.
> 
> ‘Thady had a sister, Pegeen, monstrous like him, which I fear must have made the girl monstrous indeed, for he was six feet high and heavily-made, with the florid, coarse, dark looks of many a Kerryman, which are said to derive from the survivors of Philip’s Armada come ashore, you know. I hope that is true, for it would mean he does not lie so very far from home, in a manner of speaking. When they were all quite infants she too was sometimes a playmate of the young gentleman’s, but a girl’s domestic training claims her young, and then she was sent to be companion to a maiden lady, a distant relative of some kind, in Cork.
> 
> ‘William Farrell had all the virtues and vices of his class. He was handsome, charming, gay, a hard rider to hounds, careless and spendthrift as only one who has spent his whole life beneath the shadow of mortgage and mismanagement, and never known a day when he might not as well be hanged for a ewe as a lamb, can be. Old Farrell, a genial four-bottle man, popular with his tenants for showing like a gentleman, but quite inadequate to the task of directing, let alone reviving the fortunes of a demesne, died not long before Willie’s majority, and the youth had no friends to offer him sober guidance but Thady himself, O’Quill _père_ being an obsequious sort who liked a quiet life.
> 
> ‘Thady did his best, but at length they quarrelled over Farrell’s treatment of his tenants, to whom he promised relief but delivered only further extortion. It came to blows, and as they rolled together on the flagstones of the Hall, Thady gained the upper hand, and was about to break his friend’s fine Roman nose for him, when he saw written upon Willie’s face all the ancient and immeasurable contempt of his race for Thady’s: of the gentleman for the working man, of the Saxon for the Gael, of the Protestant for the Papist. He knew at that moment that not only was their friendship at an end, but that an implacable hatred had supervened upon it, and if he did not put as much distance between them as he could, and immediately, murder would be done, so he leapt to his feet, rode straightway to Killarney and joined up.
> 
> ‘There were soldiering lives more auspiciously begun, but Thady’s turned out a good one in the end: he was strong and hardy, and his early life had given him skill in tactfully advising a raw officer, to the which I can most personally attest.
> 
> ‘Meanwhile, in the absence of any brake or control, Farrell sank deeper into debt, and his arrogant, youthful high spirits became vicious and depraved. He drank and gamed and whored, beleaguered his servants and alienated his tenants. He was given a captaincy in the Militia, and in the ‘98 was the most notorious in all Kerry for abusing any misfortunate Croppy who crossed his path, and many who were not rebels at all, but merely had a cut about them that he misliked. Indeed it is proverbial in some parts of the county, of those sorry men whom the priest allows wear their hats at Mass, that it is a custom kept in memory of Captain Farrell.
> 
> ‘So no-one was very sorry when he was ambushed on a pass in the Reeks and robbed of all he had—which happened to be no small sum that day, for he was going to pacify his creditors, one of whom happened to be a young barrister quietly making his name on the Munster circuit, and that name was Daniel O’Connell. Well, I say no-one, but someone was found nonetheless to inform upon the highwayman, and not only that, set an ambush in turn for him. Well, I say—but now, that is another part of my tale, which I shall come to presently.
> 
> 'When the robber was brought to Tralee Gaol, the warders were something astonished to find he was to be admitted to the best apartment, and his board charged to Captain Farrell, the which same noble gentleman then came to call upon the prisoner, not to gloat or to torture, but to drink whiskey, to play—not for his usual high stakes, but a dainty game of backgammon, or a boyish one of shove-halfpenny—and they were heard singing together that forsaken lover’s lament, which goes—’

Here our Colonel rumbles a snatch of it, tunefully enough, though it is scarce a song for a _basso_.

I’ll sport a cap of black,  
And a frill around my neck  
Gold rings on my fingers will I wear  
All this I’ll undertake,  
For my true lover’s sake  
He resides at the Curragh of Kildare.

But alas, he has woken a Justice of the King’s Bench, before whose stony eye Medusa herself might quake, and he remembers also he is addressing some of the Club’s most accomplished players upon a string, turns as scarlet as his coat, and resumes:

> ‘When the gaoler came around to lock up, he found Farrell hanging about the prisoner’s neck and begs leave to present to Master Turnkey the dearest friend of his boyhood, companion of his clean-limbed frolics, nurse of his earliest and most tender sentiments, _Thaddeus O’Quill_.
> 
> ‘Could it be, that the good old quartermaster-sergeant I had known, had also been, while in the service of his Majesty, a gentleman of the road? No indeed, for the moment of which I speak, Thady was lawfully and obediently doing his duty in Kilkenny, and no man can be in two places at once, unless he be a bird.
> 
> ‘Can you guess it?’

The Doctor looks up again at Castlereagh, this time in something like sympathy for the circumstance in which a desperate man might find himself in want of even a _fruit knife_. The Admiral, veteran of many a wardroom and Great Cabin dinner, is better found both to endure gamesomeness and see _longueurs_ wound to a conclusion.

‘I cannot, sir,’ says he. ‘I am with child to know.’

‘Well,’ bellows the Colonel, clapping his knee, ‘so might have been our counterfeit Thady, had the screw not been more honest than the run of such wretches, and allowed visits over-night, and so was never the jade who informed! Indeed, that was what set it all off. For it was the sister Pegeen who robbed him, and was betrayed! Ha! Ha! Is that not entirely capital?'

The Doctor and the Admiral agree that it is, capital altogether.

> 'It happened like this. Her mistress in Cork died, leaving her a small sum of money of her own, sufficient to a few weeks maintenance at most. She sent word to her mother and father at Garryantanvally, but they replied that the estate was in such disarray, Thady gone for a soldier, and Farrell so debauched, that they did not recommend her return, and she would be better to seek another situation there.
> 
> 'She met one of those seeming-kindly ladies in an eating-house, that we should not be so delicate in warning honest rustic virgins against, and at first went along with her. But, having both more than the usual share of perceptive quickness, and some knowledge of the lineaments of dissipation, she soon understood what manner of a house she had been brought to, and resolved to escape before she ceased her pretended apprenticeship, and was set to its profession. She stole a suit of clothes from a gentleman whose pleasure it was to take his ease _en travesti_ , and found them wondrous comfortable and better fitting her than their former owner. The very features that seemed rough, heavy and awkward in a maid showed shapely, jolly and ruddy in a youth, and the streets of fair Cork opened before her, no longer a site of mockery and molestation, but of bright and gleaming possibility. She took the name of Christopher Mahon, having heard it shouted across a field once and always fancied it sounded well.
> 
> ‘Christy was not long in finding lodgings, nor in beguiling the landlady’s daughter Jenny. Work was another matter, since he had received no instruction in any masculine profession, and was unused to hard manual labour. Jenny was a very minx, though, and cozened and stole to keep her beau in pocket. This could not long remain undiscovered, and her mother soon turned them out, saying they should think themselves lucky she did not call the constables, and so they took to what the merry songs call the roving life.
> 
> ‘And before you ask, gentlemen, no, our gay Jenny did _not_ doubt, not until, flush with the proceeds of his robbery of Farrell, they retired to a shebeen not far from where the counties of Limerick, Cork and Kerry meet. Christy treated everyone in the barroom, and took a strange girl or two upon his knee. Now Jenny was savage jealous, and she thought to make her man guilty and remorseful, and bind him to her always, by claiming she was bearing his child. Christy, as you might imagine, was something more than astonished—less that Jenny would deceive him, for he knew her nature, than at how successful his own subterfuge had been. Most contritely he confessed to her, saying he had thought she had known from the first, or at least since they had lain together, and never meant to do her harm. She flew into a greater fury then, because he had loved her so well, better than any she had ever known before, he had misled her not only as to his own person, but as to the capacity of mankind to keep a woman content and well-tuned.’

(We may note that while the Doctor’s complexion and profession alike render him wholly unsusceptible to blushes, at this the Admiral shifts a little in his chair.)

> ‘Jenny swore she would have her revengement, but for the moment Christy calmed her, lifting her off her little feet to bed. But she did not forget, and one day, not longer after this, she was sunning herself outside the shebeen when a small militia detachment came by. She ran in and brought them small beer and pieces of pie, showed her full and handsome bosom and asked them did they know a Captain Farrell, who had once used her so kindly that she thought to repay him with a snippet of intelligence. But a curious thing was, she left the secret of Christy's sex quite intact, and only informed upon him for the robbery.
> 
> ‘Then when Christy returned, she got him incapable drunk, stole his weapon and charged his pistols with water, and when she was sure he was sleeping, herself fled away, for no-one is hated in Ireland as an informer is hated, and the people of the shebeen would have skinned her, for bringing down Farrell upon them.
> 
> ‘And the rest of the story you already know, except that Farrell went straight from the gaol to make representations to the magistrate that he had been sorely mistook in the case of the man they called Christopher Mahon, and bid him release him instanter. The magistrate was a weak man, who liked not to have such a brute as Farrell as his enemy, so he did as he was bid.
> 
> ‘And so Christy or Thady or Pegeen, set off in search of the true Thady, and when they met with one another in Kilkenny, astonished him greatly in one way, and yet not so very much in another. You know how it is. They enjoyed a fine few days on the ran-tan together, and then Christy said he had no notion to take to the petticoat life again, he would go where his face was not known, the county of Mayo, perhaps, where the people were even more lonely and mountainy and glad to entertain a gallus sporting boy than they were in Kerry. And if he is not dead, Christopher Mahon is living there still.’

The Doctor sighs and stretches his skinny shanks. Though he has taken much less to drink than his companions, and is temperate almost to excess, it is he who signals to a servant to replace the bottle before them.

‘Such cases are very much more general on the ballad-sheets than in life,' muses the Admiral. 'Though there have been one or two in the Service—but I wonder at such a wicked piece of work as this Jenny, who would rather see her lover hanged as a robber than whipped as a fraud.’

‘Per què no els dos?’ murmurs the Doctor, a hardy, thin smile on his lips. ‘But I think I see. It is said there is honour among thieves, and perhaps—though I am distinctly inclined to doubt it, there is honour among informers too. Which perhaps is merely to say that there is no-one quite bereft of it. She may have felt aggrieved, but she knew in her heart no fraud had been done: so she informed upon him for the unequivocal crime, not for what he was, or what he was not.’

The room is silent. The fire crackles, my lord judge is snoring softly, softly snoring. The gentlemen stroke their chins.

**Author's Note:**

> If you think you recognise our friends the Admiral and the Doctor you are quite right, but if you don't it doesn't matter a bit. Challenges in the comments upon the question of whether the Doctor would be seen dead and pickled in the Kildare Street Club are heartily welcome.
> 
> O’Connells of Derrynane: Family of [Daniel O'Connell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_O%27Connell>Daniel%20O'Connell).
> 
> Croppy: an insurgent in the 1798 rebellion. There are 19th century accounts of survivors of [pitch-capping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitchcapping) (link cw: torture) being given a special dispensation to keep their hats on in church. 
> 
> a fruit knife: in his final mental illness Lord Castlereagh's family became worried enough to deprive him of the use of his razor, but he nonetheless managed to find a small knife with which to cut his throat.


End file.
